1921 census

[PaulineJ]

I am just grateful the census is being released and do not mind paying £3.50 for one item. I have only about 5 that I really, really want.

Me too. Anything else can wait. I'm fortunate to be within striking distance of Manchester, so I might tease out a few more for the train fare in a month or so.

[Familysearch]

My first one will be for my grandparents - they married on 1 June 1921!

After that, I'm going to look up the relatives I knew as a child.

That should keep the cost manageable. (I don't mind paying. I have no longer got the desire to go and sit in the local library with everyone else, using their computers).

FS

[KGarrad]

I have 5 households on my "priority" list, which I will definitely order = £15.75 with subscriber discount.

I have another 10 or so that I might order = £31.50.

That would be £47.25 to get all the records I might want. An awful lot cheaper for me than travelling to London or Manchester and an awful lot less hassle in the current climate.

The records should be free, but our glorious leaders farm them out to private companies (where else are they doing that I wonder?), so those private companies need to recoup their huge costs. I don't begrudge them one bit.

Sorry - I don't understand?
Why should they be free?

[GrahamSimons]

I have 5 households on my "priority" list, which I will definitely order = £15.75 with subscriber discount.

I have another 10 or so that I might order = £31.50.

That would be £47.25 to get all the records I might want. An awful lot cheaper for me than travelling to London or Manchester and an awful lot less hassle in the current climate.

The records should be free, but our glorious leaders farm them out to private companies (where else are they doing that I wonder?), so those private companies need to recoup their huge costs. I don't begrudge them one bit.

Sorry - I don't understand?
Why should they be free?

I agree completely.
Someone has to pay for large quantities of digitisation to make the images. Someone has to pay for the indexing and transcription processes. Someone has to pay for the computer systems and servers that deliver the data to researchers like us.
So either we pay for the product, or someone else has to - and surely we get the benefit so should pay the price?

[coombs]

No such thing as a free lunch.

In February 2004 I had been doing casual genealogy for a while by then but really got bitten by the bug that month and was at the FRC in Clerkenwell and asked a man who said the 1921 census is still going to be closed for another 18 years due to the 100 year closure rule. Now all I have to wait is 26 hours.

[Guy Etchells]

I am sure this topic is on here somewhere , but what do people think about the charges for the viewing of the census. Apparently £3.50 for one view of one item. Very expensive.
I have been waiting for this like many others ,but would like to look up multiple people.
It is a bit prohibitive for those in low incomes.

How much would it cost for you to travel from Devon to the National Archives to view the 1921 Census?
Would your travel costs and printout costs at the NA be more or less than the costs of downloading the images and or the transcripts you wish to obtain?
Now do you still think it is very expensive to be able to sit in the warmth & comfort of your own home to view & download the same records.

The problem is not the companies that have spent large sums of money digitising transcribing and hosting the records not to mention the licence fee they have to pay the National Archives for the privilege of spending all that time and money, but the people that seem to think such records appear on the internet at little cost in time and money to the companies that host such records.

I admit for the lucky few who live close to the National Archives will be able to view the records for next to nothing but for those of us who live some distance away the benefits of on line records outweigh the minimal costs, yes they really are minimal costs compared with the alternative.
Cheers
Guy

[Top-of-the-hill]

  Guy has more or less said what I was going to! I used to travel to London to see records at a cost of quite a lot of pounds (and time). Even travelling to my County Archives costs a fair bit, so I shall thankfully sit at home and check a few entries in the new census.

[coombs]

I can remember the days of travelling 150 miles down to London for a few days to do genealogy, and each day having to plod through the London rush hour in the morning, up the huge DLR platforms, buying tickets, then changing at Fenchurch Street and going through the stifling tubes, all squashed up like sardines to get from my East End hotel to the NA and the FRC in Clerkenwell, and spending hours looking through census records, BMD ledgers at the FRC or unindexed electoral records to find a single entry for an ancestor/or a likely candidate. (Each birth ledger containing about 50'000 entries, arranged by quarter and surnames A to D, E to I and so on.) Then spending an hour getting back through the evening rush hour on the tube, starving as my quest for ancestral info outweighed my quest for a 20 minute lunch break.

[groom]

Apologies, but I'm getting fed up with those who expect EVERYTHING for nothing.

I'm with mrcakey - I have 3 that I really want - my mother and her mother, my father with his parents, and my great-grandparents.  Any others are supernumerary and can wait!!

I agree with you BumbleB. I believe there have been other threads here explaining just how much work has gone into producing this so we all have access. Why should we expect it to be free? Genealogy is a hobby and hobbies cost money.

From what I understand as well, those who say they will wait for Ancestry to get it may have a long wait, as I think FindMyPast have exclusive rights for 10 years.